Manawatu Evening Standard. TUESDAY, SEPT. 24, 1929. HIGHWAYS FINANCE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 253, 24 September 1929, Page 6

Manawatu Evening Standard. TUESDAY, SEPT. 24, 1929. HIGHWAYS FINANCE.

The attitude adopted by the Prime Minister in his reception of the deputation representing the North and South Island Motor Unions, automobile associations, progress and expansion leagues, chambers of commerce and various local bodies was quite unexpected as was also his attack—for such it amounted to —upon the member for Chalmers who introduced the deputation. Sir Joseph Ward has himself alone to blame for any wrongful impression which is prevalent throughout the country in regard to his policy in the matter of highways finance. For months past, it has been understood from the utterances of Sir Joseph himself and his Minister of Public Works, that the grants of £35,000 from the Consolidated Fund, and of £200,000 from the Public Works Fund, required by the Highways Act of 1922 to be voted annually, would not be made this year. In regard to the former Sir Joseph Ward, speaking in the House of Kepresentatives on August 22nd, as report- 1 ed in Hansard, said:—

“The imposition of additional indirection taxation, specially earmarked for expenditure on highways, together with the proceeds of the tyre tax, license fees, etc., has provided ample funds for the main highways revenue account, and accordingly it is not now necessary to make an annual grant of £35,000 out of the general revenue of the Consolidated Fund.” On the same occasion Sir Joseph further said:—

“The interest on Main Highways Board loans will be recoverable from the highways revenue fund,” and further: “It is intended to provide for the recovery of interest paid in the future on amounts transferred in the past from the Public Works Fund.”

Sir Joseph’s budget statement, made on August Ist,' was almost equally explicit. “I find,” he said, “that the main highways account is paying no interest on a portion of the capital borrowed for construction purposes. This I propose to adjust.” Exception has very properly been taken to each of these statements as contrary in principle to the 1922 Act and the intentions of Parliament in passing that measure. To begin with there was no “borrowed” capital. There were to be three parties to the maintenance .and construction of the main highways—the motorists, the local authorities, and the Government. The latter was being relieved of large annual expenditures-from the Pub-

lie Works Fund on road maintenance and construction, considerably greater extent tlian tlie £290,000, which. tlie minimum sum to be paid annually from the Public Works Fund to the Main Highways Board for construction purposes. The motorists, by accepting the special taxation levied upon them, were relieving the Government of its earlier responsibility in regard to roading and, as was hoped, would later on be also relieving the local authorities of a considerable proportion of their liability in respect of road maintenance and construction. The interest on the non-revenue producing expenditure of loan moneys from the Public Works Fund has always been borne in the past by the State—that is the people as a whole —and to say that, relieved largely of its responsibility for road maintenance, the grants required to be made by the Government from the Public Works Fund under the 1922 Act. should be required to pay interest savours very much of a repudiation of the Government’s liability which more than justifies the protests made against it. Those protests have been largely of a non-party character, and the mere fact that Mr Ansell, a Reform member, has joined in those protests does not justify Sir Joseph Ward’s contention that “misleading and unreliable statements have been circulated deliberately in different parts of the country regarding” his intentions “in connection with the transfer of the ,£200,000 from the Public Works Fund to the construction fund of the Main Highways Board,” nor Sir Joseph’s further charge, apparently directed against Mr Ansell, that “these statements have, been published before I have indicated at all what*it is that is proposed to be done in connection with this all important question.”

THE GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSIBILITY.

Sir Joseph is right in speaking of this as an "all important question.” It is as important to tlie local authorities as it is to the motorists, upon whom the full cost of constructing and maintaining the highways of the Dominion would fall, if the grants to the Main Highways Board from the Consolidated and Public Works Funds were withdrawn, or, in the case of the latter, were charged as loans bearing interest. Sir Joseph has stated that the £35,000 from the Consolidated Fund will be provided this year, but the fact that the amount does not appear on the main estimates, as it should have done, indicates in itself that, prior to the protests made on the subject, there was no intention to make provision for it this year. There is no justification for treating the Public Works Fund subsidy of £200,000 as a loan, nor for the extraordinary attitude adopted by the Prime Minister, as disclosed in his reported statement on the subject, that “the general application of a policy of lending out borrowed money for nothing was one that would eventually result in financial disaster for the country.” Thursday’s deputation did not ask for the “general application” of such a policy. .It merely voiced a protest against what is generally regarded throughout the country as a breach of faith on the part of one of the three parties bound by the Highways Act to contribute to the construction and upkeep of the main highways of the Dominion. That breach of • faith will be consummated should the Government determine to charge interest on the subsidy from the the Public Works Fund, but, as Sir Joseph Ward stated on Thursday that the question is not yet finally settled, we trust wiser counsels will prevail, and that the threatened repudiation of the 1922 Act will not be persisted in.